


Comme des Garçons

by bauble



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 02:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13308357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bauble/pseuds/bauble
Summary: Being sprayed with a chemical nerve agent leads to some disturbing side effects when mixed with Somnacin. Gift fic for Sibilant, who requested something... unique. And got it.





	Comme des Garçons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sibilant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sibilant/gifts).



> Happiest of birthdays to Sibilant, who is a constant source of pride, joy and amusement. I will always be grateful that we live in an era with technology that allows us to connect from opposite sides of the world. A small, strange story to mark this year, and may we celebrate many more to come.

"This isn't my build. Where the hell are we?"

It's Arthur's voice, forever over-enunciated and deeper than expected, but Eames can't place the direction it's coming from. Granted, dream acoustics don't necessarily follow the laws of physics, but there's almost an echoing quality to it--as if Eames were trapped at the bottom of a well and Arthur was bellowing down from the opening.

Eames pivots, trying to locate Arthur in the disturbingly familiar location he's found himself in. There's the excruciatingly uncomfortable claw footed chair to his right, the hand-woven tasseled rug (which was the bane of his existence as a boy) under his feet, and, most damning of all, stern portraits of various forebears on the walls. It's a place he hasn't been to in decades, not since he wrested control of the property away from imbecilic relatives and sold it for use as a tourist trap. 

Bloody subconscious. Eames strikes a casual, indifferent tone, "Arthur? Where are you?"

"Hey." The word reverberates inside Eames' head, almost painful. "I'm standing in a living room filled with an eclectic mix of antique furniture. The architecture looks Elizabethan, with--shit, is that original William Morris wallpaper?"

Yes, Eames thinks to himself, a fact that had been seared into his six-year-old hide the first and last time he tried to draw on the walls. "Likely only a convincing replica. I believe I'm in the same room. I don't see you--why don't you walk towards the fireplace?"

There's a pause, and even though Eames can't see him, he can feel the frown in Arthur's response. "I can't. It's like I'm fixed in place and can't control--wait. Now I'm moving."

Eames comes to a halt beside the pianoforte. He idly reaches out to plunk a few bars with form that would have earned a tongue lashing from his old tutor, who also happened to be his mother. Still no Arthur appears.

"How--" Arthur sounds confused. "I can't play music."

"That's me," Eames explains patiently. Arthur's probably in the next room over, mildly disoriented. Disorientation he will try to use as evidence that they're not fit to perform the upcoming job; never mind the weeks they've already sunk into prep. Any excuse to call off a job. It's almost as if the man doesn't want to earn any money--

"Of course I want to get paid," Arthur snaps. "But not if there's a 75% chance I could I end up in a coma."

Eames' fingers still on the keyboard. "What did you say?"

"That the interaction between chemical nerve agents and Somnacin could cause me to wake up believing I'm a giant beetle who needs to climb into a dark crawl space? It took them weeks to find Lawson's body in the rafters and it'd been half eaten by rats already." Arthur pauses. "Why are you freaking out?"

"I'm--" Eames stops to take a breath. Then another. "Arthur, I’m going to hold up my hand. You'll recognize it by the pinky, which was broken as a child and never set correctly. Tell me if you see it."

"Why--" Arthur stops when Eames wiggles his fingers in front of his face--both their faces, apparently. "I'm seeing what you see."

"You are in my mind." Eames swallows around the words unpleasantly as he walks to the mirror above the fireplace mantle. He can hear--feel--Arthur's gasp.

"Where's my body?" Arthur demands, alarm rising like pressure inside Eames' skull. "Where the fuck is my body?"

"I don't know and it hardly matters. Let's shoot ourselves out of this nightmare and be done with it."

"Did you not hear what I said about Lawson getting eaten by rats?" Arthur says before Eames can materialize a gun. "If trace amounts of nerve agent in our bloodstream led to this shitshow, who knows what the additional trauma of being shot in the same brain might do."

"It might be fine," Eames ventures, not as confident in that assertion as he'd like.

"Or we might wake up like this."

Eames can't tell if Arthur's joking or not. But very idea of waking up with a disembodied presence lingering in his mind puts an end to that particular avenue of thought. "Perhaps if we go outside." Anything to escape this blasted place.

Luckily, Arthur seems too preoccupied to scan Eames' thoughts for the reason why. "Go outside? We need to find my body so I can--"

"Get out of my head, yes," Eames murmurs as he wanders the wretchedly familiar environs. Everything is the same as it was except the layout. The doors open to rooms at random, following no particular order, and none lead outside--keeping them locked in a spiraling labyrinth, an endless whorl from one of Arthur's fucking paradoxes.

"You think I caused this?" Arthur says. "You think I want to be trapped here?"

"My dreams aren't structured like this." Eames flings open a door that should lead to the back garden but takes them into the kitchen instead. "Mazes and loops and puzzles."

"And whose childhood home is this, huh? You think I grew up on the set of a Merchant Ivory film?"

Of course Arthur wouldn't even pretend to mind his own business. "Stay out of my thoughts." Eames rattles through the pantry, the wine cellar, the servants' quarters. 

"I'd love to, once we find my body. Assuming it's not walking around like a zombie. I guess best case scenario is that it's lying on the ground somewhere like a doll, waiting for me."

Despites Eames' irritation with Arthur, frustration at the situation, and growing dread that he might not be getting paid for the upcoming job after all (because Arthur was right, ugh), the image of Arthur's recumbent body--naked and waiting--sparks a momentary heat. Eames brushes it away as soon as it appears.

"Are you thinking about fucking my lifeless doll body right now?" Arthur is incredulous.

"It was a stray thought. I was hardly going to act upon it," Eames says as a fresh wave of annoyance breaks over him. "This is ridiculous. Your body's probably not even in the dream."

"Look, I've been in a lot of bizarre dreams over the years, but I've always been corporeal. And--hey, where are you going?"

The hall closet is every bit as dark and musty as he remembers it, especially when he shuts the door behind him. Father's old steamer trunk is collecting dust on the floor, and Eames takes a seat on it, leaning back against the wall. He closes his eyes, inhaling the scent of mothballs and shoe polish. "We're going to wait out the timer in here. It should be less than two hours on the clock."

"You can't be serious. You want to wait for two hours in a closet in the dark." He can feel Arthur's shock, his impotent fear--all of which is being channeled into anger. Eames keeps his eyes closed and resolves to ignore it. "Eames. Eames, I know you hear me. Do not fucking ignore me."

Eames doesn't move, doesn't open his eyes, doesn't respond. He tries to keep his mind closed off and empty as he feels the edges of something underneath Arthur's anger--panic. There's a wisp of a memory, indistinct: Arthur as a young boy shouting at a figure, pleading for her to speak to him, begging for the silent treatment to end--

Eames' hands begin to move, not of his volition. They're jerky motions, almost spasms, and his eyes fly open to stare down in horror. "What are you doing?"

"Fuck you if you think I'm going to wait here in the dark," Arthur says as he tries to seize control of Eames' legs, his whole body. Eames resists, managing to hold on to everything except for his arms, which flail out in every direction, slamming against the walls, the door, and Eames' own cheeks.

"Stop it," Eames hisses when he's inadvertently slapped again.

"Now you have something to say?" The rage is mixing with determination, with triumph, with--something else, as Arthur traces fingers over Eames' lips, his neck, his chest. "You can't ignore me."

Eames' belt is undone, his trousers opened. He tries to stop it. But his traitorous hands are under Arthur's sway and the rest of his body seems frozen, caught between two wills. Arthur's stroking his cock now, rough, and it shouldn't be erotic, it isn't erotic, and yet it is. "Why the hell are you doing this?" Eames asks as his cock begins to harden. "It's not as if you haven't seen it or touched it before. Hell, you've even jacked me off before."

"Not like this," Arthur replies, pleased. Arthur feels powerful, in control, and Eames feels--

The touch of his own hands is too familiar and too strange. It's horrifying, like a violation. It's thrilling, to know how much Arthur wants to fuck him. 

Eames moans when Arthur shoves a dry finger inside. It's not quite pleasure, yet it sends a shiver of excitement through Eames. He allows his body to slump, to surrender.

"You want this," Arthur marvels as orgasm approaches.

He does. He doesn't. He feels himself coming, lifting, a kick. He's asleep and then--

Awake.

Eames opens his eyes, tugs the cannula out with shaky fingers. His mind is blissfully quiet. Sprawled in the lawn chair next to the PASIV, Arthur is unconscious, still trapped within the dream. The timer reads fifteen minutes left.

Eames could tip Arthur out of the chair, kick him awake. Or.

Eames approaches Arthur's body and opens his trousers.

fin


End file.
